Brace yourself, this is going to be long and personal. But I am sharing it in hopes it might help someone struggling. I believe social media should be used to talk about the not-so-beautiful parts of our lives as much as we would like to highlight our achievements and good days.

For the past 2 or more months I have been dealing with burnout. Although this is not my first time dealing with it, this time it came at a time when a lot was at stake. I had this idea that I could do it all and be good at all of it. I was in a way known as the person who does everything, and it was a frequent question acquaintances and friends asked me “How do you do it all?” I was happy being in one of the most demanding grad school programs, having multiple part-time jobs, running a YouTube channel and active social media pages, supporting my non-profit work back in Ethiopia, learning to live in a new city and country, trying to make new friends and connections, nurture my passion and hobbies, keep my connections and friendships back home, learning to live alone, to cook and eat healthy and exercise regularly.

But it was a matter of time before burnout came knocking out on my door. And it knocked loud and clear. In a matter of a few days, it took me from being engaged, motivated, and energetic to have zero motivation to finish daily tasks. Seemingly small activities started feeling like mountains and I started getting overwhelmed. Anxiety in the morning started taking center place in place of my love for mornings and looking forward to seizing the day. Rather than taking a break, I kept pushing. I disconnected from my family, friends, and community and isolated myself because everything became so draining. Unhealthy coping mechanisms were starting to show up such as stress eating and avoiding my activities until the last minute which all led to me operating at a bare minimum.  It doesn’t help that life didn’t stop throwing me more challenges in the past few months. During this state, I feared I was never going to be motivated again and I was scared I was losing opportunities.

But as always, I am not a quitter, and nothing is ever that bad. After weeks and weeks of feeling like I’ll never be part of the functional society, feeling like my career is dying, feeling like I’m disconnected from friends and the world, feeling like I’ve missed out on opportunities, feeling like an imposter for being in best program in the world but being able to live up to its standards, feeling like a lazy person and feeling like I don’t belong to anything significant anymore I made a decision.  Either I can stay in this space for months or I take the necessary steps to try and go back to myself that feels like it’s lost. I realized I could easily burn myself out by trying to do everything at once again trying to make up for the months I was “not myself” or I could try and take a different approach! I chose the second one. I decided to prioritize my mental and physical health. When I needed to sleep, rather than pushing myself to do one more assignment, I responded to my body positively and went to. I started to be conscious of what I was eating, and consuming on social media and the people around me. I started making sure I was aware of my mental state and rather than being harsh on myself for being productive I decided to mother my brain and become loving towards it. I realized I needed to be on my side. I can’t be my enemy anymore. And so, I started to work on the negative thoughts and feelings that trapped me in my imposter syndrome and made me catatonic. Whenever a negative thought or harsh criticism arises from my brain, I try my best to assess it objectively. Even if that thought was true(mostly it’s not) I tried to gently remove the guilt and shame and find solutions. I am very early on my journey to heal from the toxic productivity mindset that got me to my burnout. I also want people to understand millions of people do 10 to 20 times more work than I do but we are all built differently, and we all have different thresholds. I am just acknowledging mine.

All of this is to send out a positive message that things get better, you are never alone when you feel like you are burnt out, and when you feel like there is no more energy left in you to keep on going. I’ve interacted with a lot of people who were going through the same thing the past few weeks and it made me feel like I’m not alone. It’s good to know you aren’t lazy or something is wrong with you. It is just a human response to stress, disconnection, and fatigue. So, take it easy. The world can wait! You come first. You need to be here fully and authentically so you can experience life at its best and your best self can give out all the beautiful things to the world as it’s meant to.

I also want to say reach out to family and friends in such times when you feel like you are burnt out and you have nothing left in you. My friends helped me deal with processing a lot of this and I might have been stuck in this place for more time if I had not gotten the support I got.